Ball in NCAA's court after latest damning report from Yahoo!
As the federal government continues its investigation into corruption in college basketball and prepares to take nine men – including former college assistants at Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and USC – to trial, more information has emerged. Yahoo! Sports reporters Pete Thamel and Pat Forde released an article Friday detailing meetings, meals and alleged payments made to several former Rivals150 players – or individuals associated with them – by NBA agent Andy Miller and associate Christian Dawkins.
First, as we’ve all long suspected, agents are very active in their recruitment of players before they announce intentions to enter the NBA Draft or exhaust their college eligibility. As evidenced by the article, that recruitment begins while players are in high school. What we won’t know yet is how this ties into the college programs recruiting these players. Are there direct links? Not yet.
Former five-star prospect Dennis Smith, who played one season at N.C. State in 2016-17, may have received over $70,000 in extra benefits. Other big names like former Rivals.com No. 1 Josh Jackson and other five-star prospects whose college days are done -- Bam Adebayo, Markelle Fultz, Diamond Stone and Isaiah Whitehead – and are currently playing in college – Miles Bridges, Wendell Carter, Kevin Knox, Collin Sexton – are all listed. If you are the college programs associated with these players — Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, etc. — you have to be nervous about what else the feds have and what the NCAA will do with this information, and when.
Who knew what and when did they know it? That’s going to end up playing a large role in what the NCAA ends up doing about this. Just because Bridges’ mother may have received what looks to be a small ($400) advance or Jackson’s mother is alleged to have received $2,700, it doesn’t mean that either Bridges or Jackson knew about it themselves and it certainly doesn’t show that Tom Izzo or Bill Self orchestrated everything. Then again, the NCAA’s recent history shows the head coach is ultimately responsible for his program (Jim Boeheim, Rick Pitino) and can be punished for misdeeds of his program despite claiming innocence and ignorance.
What steps can the NCAA take and when will they be able to make them? If anything, the organization’s history of investigating and punishing programs has been confusing. We just never know who they are going to truly hammer and who they will let slide. Louisville had a title vacated for stripper parties while North Carolina was basically let off for athletes being enrolled in fake classes. The inconsistency makes it hard to tell what they will do.
NCAA President Mark Emmert released a statement on the Yahoo! Sports story today.
“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America. Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports. They are an affront to all those who play by the rules. Following the Southern District of New York's indictments last year, the NCAA Board of Governors and I formed the independent Commission on College Basketball, chaired by Condoleezza Rice, to provide recommendations on how to clean up the sport. With these latest allegations, it's clear this work is more important now than ever. The Board and I are completely committed to making transformational changes to the game and ensuring all involved in college basketball do so with integrity. We also will continue to cooperate with the efforts of federal prosecutors to identify and punish the unscrupulous parties seeking to exploit the system through criminal acts.”
The statement sounds like some tough talk, but we’ll see exactly what the NCAA is able to do – because I imagine much of what it can investigate will depend on what the feds are willing to share with it – and more importantly what it is willing to do. The NCAA is a member-run organization. Is it going to be willing to take down some of its cash cows and glamour programs if it comes down to it?
A huge key to this will be whether or not the NCAA sees salacious headlines and implication in scandal hurting their bottom line. Even the mighty NFL has been subject to losing audience over constantly being in the headlines for one controversy or another. If Joe Public is fine with this stuff it could open the doors to eventually paying players or perhaps letting them have agents. If Joe Public says they won’t watch or attend events until things are cleaned up, then we really could see some big names being taken down and major changes made.
Bottom line, the report from Forde and Thamel is well-reported and contains very real information. They aren’t speculating and they have gotten access to legitimate documents that can’t simply be dismissed or swept under the rug. There are links to things that would be considered clear rules violations under current regulations.
The things that have been reported so far are things that I feel the game can easily recover from if handled well by all those involved. However, if the report is only the tip of the iceberg, then exactly what is revealed once we see the entire iceberg could indeed be a game-changer and reshape college hoops and recruiting as we currently know it.